He may have worked in the lofty pastry kitchens of Noma — voted the World’s Best Restaurant in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2014 — and the now-defunct two Michelin-starred Restaurant Andre in Singapore, but all Singaporean lad Mohamed Al-Matin wants is to open his own bakery selling rustic bakes like cruffins. So two years after his stint as Noma’s pastry sous chef, the well-spoken 31-year-old returned to Singapore in January this year to start his own business.

But as most stories go these days, Covid-19 happened and his plans for “a quaint little bakery selling pastries and cakes with a small dine-in area” have gone awry. Nevertheless, Matin has been making waves in the months since with his pop-ups at cafes such as Bearded Bella, Park Bench Deli and Maxi Coffee Bar where he’s sold limited quantities of his signature kouign-amann, galettes and croissants.

Matin’s career in fine-dining restaurants began in 2013 at mod French Restaurant Andre, where he’d applied for a post in its pastry kitchen. Just before he was due to start work, he was severely injured in a hit-and-run accident in New York, which left him bedridden for several months. Chef-owner Andre Chiang (pictured above, right) kept Matin’s position and gave him an admin job until he was able to walk and gain function of his right hand. It may have taken him more than six months to make his way into the pastry kitchen, but by the time he left Restaurant Andre four years later, Matin had worked his way up to become head pastry chef.

Photo: Mohamed Al-Matin

The plucky lad moved on to fill the role as pastry sous chef (second-in-command to the head pastry chef) at culinary temple Noma in Copenhagen, which he describes as “really intense”. He adds: “Noma is all about pushing for excellence and organisation. Every three months, the menus change. And every three months, the group of interns that work under the head pastry chef and I, also change. We were always managing different groups of people and different sets of egos, working in different languages because some team members didn’t speak English.” Chef Matin is top left in the photo, pictured with the Noma team and chef-founder René Redzepi ​​​​​​​(in green).

Photo: Mohamed Al-Matin

“It’s a huge operation, but everyone pushes for excellence. The menus are created by Noma’s test kitchen, so my job was very organisational [instead of inventive]. One of the more challenging desserts we had to plate during my time there was a mould (yes, mould) pancake made from barley inoculated with koji spores and left to ferment for a couple of days until white mould grows on it. Sometimes it’s sweet, sometimes it’s boozy, but if it comes out just right, it tastes exactly like crepes from a dessert shop. Some days, it would be difficult to portion it out or slice because of [varying] temperatures, moisture levels, humidity… it wasn’t always a success. Just imagine cooking and rolling barley into a sheet; it’s meticulous and finicky.”

When asked why he chose to give up his enviable job at Noma to come home, Matin says: “Working in fine-dining restaurants has really taught me about pushing for excellence, but [making] pastry in a restaurant is different from pastries in a bakery. At the restaurant, we do plated desserts, ice creams and mousses. But I’ve always dreamed of having my own bakery where you rise to the scent of baking pastries in the morning. I don’t want to make anything fancy, I want to make pastries and cakes like Japanese-style entremets (small elegant cakes) that I like to eat.”

After completing his National Service, Matin studied pastry arts and culinary management at Le Cordon Bleu Sydney, where he went on to work at well-known Aussie bakeries such as Black Star Pastry and Zumbo. “My passion has always been in pastry. I learnt a lot from them and I want to return to the pastry kitchens in that vein,” he explains.

While he continues looking for a shop space to call his own (and also waiting to see what the new government rules will bring), Matin is working out of Aussie-style café Bearded Bella’s kitchen (the owner is a friend) in Craig Road. He recently started his online store (https://www.lematinpatisserie.com/) from which he sells just 30 boxes daily, each containing five pastries at $49 per box, inclusive of delivery. Matin says the selection will change weekly but would include signatures such as his smoked cruffin, kouign-amann, lacto-fermented plum galette, and rose and pistachio escargot. He plans to also offer mousse cakes and Japanese-style entremets in future. In the week since the online store opened, Matin’s bakes have proven so popular that they are consistently sold out. He says that orders will now open every Sunday at 4pm for the coming week.

We managed to buy a box from his last pop-up at Bearded Bella, which contained the following pastries:

The best kouign-amann we’ve had in years. Put simplistically, the kouign-amann from Brittany is a dense, chubby, sugar-laden croissant, which by its nature is rich, sticky and very sweet. Somehow, Matin manages to keep his version coated in a fragile, glassine layer of crunchy caramelised sugar while maintaining a balanced sweetness that doesn’t make you want to run to the dentist. The pastry is lush and buttery (ok, very buttery) yet crisp and sticky with the flavour of deeply caramelised sugar. Divine with a cup of unsweetened coffee or tea to chase it with.

Lacto-fermentation is really the fancy term for pickling. In this case, the plums are fermented with salt for two days, which leads them to produce lactic acid. Taste-wise, they translate to soured plums with a hint of saltiness and a velvety mouthfeel. These sit on a rich pastry that’s made from a ratio of 75 percent butter to flour (hello, Covid kilos) that is akin to a denser puff pastry. A sprinkling of sugar gives the pastry the touch of sweetness it needs.

Croissant dough striped with charcoal powder, filled with applewood-smoked pastry cream and topped with eucalyptus meringue. This is an interesting creation, with the distinct flavour of smoky sweetness running through the silky pastry cream in the centre, and a crown of fluffy burnt meringue. We like the contrasting textures of crisp, feathery croissant against the satiny pastry cream and marshmallowy meringue kissed with eucalyptus essence, which tastes like liquorice. “I was inspired to develop this pastry during the Australian bush fires, when Australian pastry chefs were selling pastries to raise relief funds,” said Matin. “The eucalyptus meringue is my nod to all the koalas that perished in the fire.”

The generous sprinkling of toasted cashews is a lovely, creamy foil to the bright orange glaze in this pretty snail-shaped confection. While we were expecting lighter croissant dough, what we got was a breadier pastry that filled us up quickly. This was one pastry that we wish was just a touch sweeter so that the flavours could pop more.

Don’t expect anything super experimental like intentionally mouldy pancakes. Instead, look forward to extremely well-made classic pastries with interesting twists, like the smoked cruffin. Each generously-sized piece can easily be shared between two people, and we like that chef Matin has worked the cost of delivery into the price of each box.

$49 per box of five pastries (including islandwide delivery). Orders open every Sunday at 4pm via www.lematinpatisserie.com